It then looks at each commandment in turn to determine if it’s something we built our laws on. The article concludes with [slightly reformatted for emphasis]:

Out of the ten commandments:

Four (1, 2, 3, 10) are counter to American laws.

Three (6, 8, 9) are part of our legal system, but are part of just about every legal system in history. [and predate the 10 Commandments]

Two (4, 5) are not a part of our laws.

One (7) may or may not be a part of state or local laws.

Even in a state that has laws concerning #7, that still means less than half of the 10 commandments carry any legal weight, and an equal number are illegal to enforce.

Those that claim the 10 commandments are our basis for law apparently do not know the law very well. The only thing funnier is those that want it posted illegally in schools “to teach children respect for the law”.

Go over to Skeptic Report and read the whole article. Save it to your hard drive. The next time one of your fundie relatives sends you an email about how U.S. law is based on the Ten Commandments, send them a copy of this.

This entry was posted
on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Church and State, Rationalism, Religion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

12 Responses to “U.S. Law is not Based on the Ten Commandments. Get Over It.”

NOT defending the ‘our laws are based on the ten commandments’ at all, but #4 could be considered to have been part of some local and state laws: Blue Laws that prohibit sales of alcohol and whether certain establishments can be open on a Sunday.

To sneak around the First Amendment many have adopted the tactic of calling it an “historical document” and “the basis for our system of law”, often trying to post it as part of a larger display with historical documents. To me, this is like trying to make a marijuana plant legally acceptable by planting daisies and gardenias around it and calling it a botanical display.

LOL! I love that description. Great article.

Yeah…I’m gonna bookmark this article. If I ever come across a Fundie that says “The only law is God’s law!” All I have to do is whip this out and shove it under their nose. :p

I don’t see how it’s legal to have a law strictly forbidding sales of alcohol on Sunday and CHRISTmas. It was ridiculous having to drive an hour to Illinois for beer runs in college (the beer bought on Saturday would unfailing be consumed immediately!)

The problem with blue laws is it’s hard to get them reversed. I’m not entirely sure why. I mean, yes, there is the religious component (nobody needs to drink when they should be at church, afterall), but there’s more to it than that. One possible reason may be the negative connotation it has.

Probably the same reason why it’s SO hard to decriminalize (let alone legalize) marijuana. It’s medically no worse than alcohol (as long as it is not smoked), but the negative public view kills attempts to make more permissive laws for the use of it.

Sam Harris makes some excellent points about the ten commandments in “The End of Faith”. Refuting fundies who claim that American law is based on them and that there can be no morality without the sky-fairy’s stone tablets, he points out that in the first commandments God seems to be way more concerned about people showing him the proper respect rather than giving humans guidelines for better lives. Apparently god’s number one concern was not whether humans were murdering each other or banging their neighbor’s spouse – it was that they acknowledge that Yahweh’s better than Baal or Moloch or Zeus or….oh, and by the way, don’t kill or steal….Yahweh – he the Man!

Colorado still has the blue laws, too. No alcohol on Sunday and only 3.2 beer in grocery stores (the one Super Target in Denver permitted to sell alcohol because of some bizarre loophole about a pre-existing liquor store in the spot has to actually rope off their liquor section on Sundays). It makes it a PITA when cooking with wine on Sunday only to find out you drank it all the night before. So far all attempts to repeal them there haven’t worked. Apparently the liquor lobby wants them. And people paint it as helping small businesses. I’m no economist so I have no idea if that’s a valid argument. But when the fundies and the liquor lobby align, I’m askeered.